Interview with Daron Acemoglu – on AI and crypto

 Interview with Daron Acemoglu – Frank Pagano

"What exponential technologies will change our world, in your opinion, by 2030 – between Blockchain, AI, Spatial Computing, Quantum?

"Difficult to say. All of these are highly hyped. Which technologies will flourish and find impactful applications remains to be seen. I don’t believe that blockchain has the potential to have pervasive effects except in a few narrow applications. AI is a different story. Even though much of what is written and said about AI is an exaggeration, there is no doubt that AI is advancing rapidly, and it is being rolled out in many sectors. Just on that basis, I expect it will impact many sectors of the economy, including social media, communication and human resource management. Whether it can penetrate other activities, such as finance, law, education and healthcare remain to be seen. More importantly, even if it does become widely used in sectors such as education and healthcare, there is a big difference between good use and bad use. For example, rolling out ChatGPT to millions of students and encouraging them to learn from the chatbot rather than their teachers is easy. Making sure that they learn the right material and learn effectively is much harder.

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"Do you think the financial and banking system will accept at some point crypto, or even just bitcoin? What’s your take on the future of the financial system, which should be open for all, and where financial fees should become a commodity, namely equal to zero?

"I hope not. Right now, cryptocurrencies are valuable for three simple reasons: they permit illicit activities; there is some premium because if one of them becomes widely accepted, the company in charge of it would become fabulously wealthy; and there is a bubble component to many cryptocurrencies, with gullible investors sometimes being encouraged to pay excessive valuations for some currencies. None of those sources of valuation are socially beneficial. My view is that cryptocurrencies could be useful in some very narrow circumstances, but they should be very heavily regulated."